Domenico Giustiniano promoted to Research Professor at IMDEA Networks

The story of an early vocation that has developed into a top-level scientific career

10 July 2025

The mother turned on the audio tape recorder and began interviewing her son. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” His mother asked him when he was just 11 years old. “I like to study. I want to be a scientist,” young Domenico replied without hesitation. That moment tenderly reveals the early vocation of someone who, decades later, has just achieved a significant professional milestone: Domenico Giustiniano has successfully passed the evaluation for promotion to Research (Full) Professor at IMDEA Networks. “I look forward to continuing to contribute to making the Institute a reference research center worldwide,” he says.

The news was made official this July and marks an important step in his career as a researcher and is today a recognized expert in the field of wireless networks. Giustiniano has been part of IMDEA Networks since November 2013, where he leads the Pervasive Wireless System group.

Before joining IMDEA Networks, he built his career at top-tier institutions: he was a Senior Researcher and Lecturer at ETH Zurich and spent four years as a Postdoctoral Researcher at Disney Research Zurich and Telefónica Research Barcelona. In 2008, he obtained a PhD in Telecommunication Engineering from the University of Rome Tor Vergata.

His research has made a deep impact on the scientific community. He is the author of numerous publications in top international conferences such as ACM MobiCom, MobiSys, CoNEXT, INFOCOM, IPSN, among others, and in leading journals such as IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, and IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing.

He served as General Vice-Chair of ACM MobiCom 2023, General Chair of EWSN 2018 and IFIP/IEEE SustainIT 2015 and regularly participates as a TPC member at flagship conferences. He was also the coordinator of the H2020 European project ENLIGHT’EM, focused on low-energy visible light communication for the Internet of Things (2019–2023).

Beyond academia, Giustiniano has also embraced technological entrepreneurship. He is co-founder, board member, and Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) of the startup Sensory-Fi Ltd, which offers IoT solutions for greenhouses using LiFi technology. He has also spearheaded open initiatives such as OpenVLC, a research platform for visible light communication networks, and Electrosense, a non-profit association for crowdsourced spectrum data analytics. In 2021, he completed an Executive Education at IE Business School on management fundamentals and skills for scientists and researchers.

Today, looking back, that childhood dream of becoming a scientist has not only come true — it has gone far beyond expectations. And that brief audio fragment from the past — a small voice in Italian saying “voglio fare lo scienziato” — now takes on a special meaning, echoing a vocation that has become a reality.